Floricoltura e design: nuovi mercati ad alto valore aggiunto per le produzioni ornamentali

Today Italian floriculture is suffering the effects of a globalized market, dominated by good quality and low cost industrial productions, distributed by the Dutch market and originated from the South of the World. Tuscany, with its own complexities, is suffering the lack of policies or collective initiatives intended to redevelop the local floriculture system. Flora Toscana, one of the most relevant Italian marketing cooperative, working together with local growers, research institutes and local authorities, has started a long-term path aimed to revive Tuscan floriculture taking advantage of the potentiality of an emerging national market’s value-added niche: the floral design one. The University of Florence Department of Economics and Business is carrying out the project. It aims at defining a differentiated offering to be positioned in the niche. Here the price is no more externally determined by the market thus enhancing the possibility to use marketing strategies in order to gain a long term competitive advantage. The Department conducted a desk analysis on literature and official statistical sources and a qualitative survey involving Flora Toscana and several operators acting in the floral design supply chain. The results led to the niche definition and its characterization, to the evaluation of its potential and to the identification of an adequate strategic approach, connecting production and R&S management to a continuative process of market trends analysis in order to obtain high added value products.